Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters

by Unknown

  Williams, Edy, 177

  Williams, Emlyn, 146

  Williams, Molly, 473

  Willis, Connie, 158

  Wilson, Harold, Baron, 91, 126n, 259

  Wilson, Mary, Lady, 116

  Windsor, Edward, Duke of (David), 345 &n

  Windsor, Wallis, Duchess of, 346

  Winner, Michael, 181

  Wiseman, Thomas, 94

  Witt, Peter, 62

  Wogan, Sir Terence (Terry), 433

  Wolfenden Report, 310–11

  Woman in Question, The (film), 80n

  Woman’s Hour (radio programme), 426

  Wood, Natalie, 211; death, 240

  Woodward, Joanne, 398, 430

  Wooldridge, Susan, 277n

  Woolf, James, 66

  Woolf, Virginia, 185, 478; A Room of One’s Own: stage adaptation, 376n, 405n

  Wooll, Edward: Libel, 455n

  Wright, Graeme, 506

  Wrong Is Right (film), 222n

  Yaddo, New York State (writers’ colony), 98n, 448 &n

  Yates, Peter, 222n

  Yelland, David, 331n

  Yom Kippur War (1973), 85, 104, 107

  York, Michael, 84, 172, 177, 181, 194

  Young, Freddie, 108

  Young Winston (film), 62n

  Zetterling, Mai, 76, 112, 462

  Zurlini, Valerio, 104

  Kathleen Tynan – ‘adorable, brilliant, maddening’ – with Dirk and Tony in a rare portrait, by Patrick Lichfield, taken during the making of Justine in 1968.

  With Jack (‘Tony’) Jones on wartime leave at the Van den Bogaerde family home in Clayton, Sussex.

  ‘Mrs X’ – Dorothy Gordon, whom Dirk never met, but with whom he had ‘a strange, moving, love affair’.

  Jill (‘Maude’) Melford at Villa Berti in 1969.

  With the loyal Antonia and Eduardo Boluda, who followed Dirk and Tony to Rome and then to Provence.

  ‘The King’ and his consort: Joseph and Patricia Losey in Paris for the opening of The Go-Between (June 1971).

  With Ian Holm and Bee Gilbert on location for The Fixer in 1967.

  With Ann Skinner and Dirk’s faithful stand-in, Arnold Schulkes, at Lord’s while shooting Darling on a sun-drenched day in September 1964. The story called for rain, with the result that hoses were deployed and the continuity script was soaked. Dirk led the rescue operation on the hallowed turf.

  With ‘The Emperor’, Luchino Visconti, on location in 1970 for Death in Venice.

  ‘Sold out and great fun and very irreverant [sic]’ – Dirk at the National Film Theatre, where he was interviewed by Margaret Hinxman in the John Player Lecture series on 8 November 1970.

  Dilys Powell in uncharacteristically flamboyant mode while launching a 1975 exhibition at the NFT devoted to her fellow critic, the late Richard Winnington.

  On the terrace with the ‘wise, funny, and often sharply bitter’ Penelope Mortimer, who wrote of Dirk: ‘Though he was older, more wizened than I had imagined, I loved him on sight.’

  On location in 1975 for Permission to Kill with Ava Gardner – ‘still incredibly beautiful […] and eyes so green that the lakes were dimmed by her.’

  Earliest days at Clermont: with his mother, Margaret Van den Bogaerde.

  The house on the hill – ‘a beautiful place, where I have always wanted to be.’

  Not Van Gogh, but Tony: his idealised study of Clermont, painted on glass in 1971.

  The drawing-room: once stabling, then the studios of an artist in stained-glass, finally transformed in 1970 by Dirk’s architect, Léon Loschetter.

  The ‘cockpit’, with Leonard Rosoman’s ‘The Wave, Amagansett’ in pride of place.

  The terraces in unfamiliar garb.

  With Daphne Fielding at St Jean Cap Ferrat in August 1975. Twenty years later she told Dirk that ‘the things I have loved most in my long and lucky life have been Reading, Riding, Rejoicing, and Rogering. In that order. All that now remains is Reading.’

  At work with Norah Smallwood – ‘She was a titan! Nothing could escape her brilliant eye or the furious correcting of her right hand and pencil!’

  Julie Harris meets Julie Harris. The costume designer and Dirk’s almost exact contemporary (left) won an Oscar for her work on Darling. The actress co-starred in the 1964 NBC television production, Little Moon of Alban.

  A ‘stunning experience’ – working on Alain Resnais’ Providence in 1976, with John Gielgud, Ellen Burstyn and David Warner.

  With Fassbinder at Clermont in May 1977 to discuss Despair ...

  … and, ironing out the ‘bumps’, its screenwriter Tom Stoppard.

  The ‘wonderfully civilised, amusing, wise and interesting’ Elton John returns to Clermont in June 1980 with a copy of his latest album, ‘21 at 33’.

  On location for The Patricia Neal Story in 1981.

  With one of his most ‘pleasing guests’, the ill-fated Natalie Wood.

  ‘Beloved’ Charlotte Rampling, on assignment at Clermont for Elle magazine, and her husband Jean-Michel Jarre.

  ‘It looks as if I am painting a backcloth; not the Hippo-Pool’ – Dirk prepares le bassin for the summer of 1984. The former irrigation-tank was christened in honour of an ample guest who made a spectacular entrance.

  The waters await.

  ‘The no-nonsense kind of lady I love’ – Glenda Jackson, with Tony.

  The climax of the 1984 Cannes Film Festival: John Huston receives his hommage while President Dirk’s ‘adorable, sensible, grown-up’ juror Isabelle Huppert looks on.

  The ‘extraordinary’ Jacques Henri Lartigue – legendary photographer and near neighbour.

  Dirk’s notes for the principal prizes, including the Palme d’Or. He recorded later that he had presided like a British officer in Aden.

  Waiting for his Doctorate: the man of letters at St Andrews University, 4 July 1985.

  Olga Horstig-Primuz celebrates the publication of her memoirs in 1990. Guy Tréjan, Claudine Auger, Gérard Oury, Michèle Morgan, Dirk; Charlotte Rampling, Françoise Christophe, ‘Mamma Olga’, Edwige Feuillère, Alain Delon. Absent, alas, was the most fêted of her stable, Brigitte Bardot, whose casting in Doctor at Sea (1955) initiated the enduring friendship between super-agent and Dirk.

  Dirk’s literary agent, Pat Kavanagh, with her husband, Julian Barnes, who shared his passion for gardening.

  Left to right: Brian McFarlane, historian and inquisitor; Susan Owens meets her faithful correspondent as he signs copies of Backcloth at Hatchards, Piccadilly, in September 1986; an Englishman abroad – David Frankham at home in America.

  ‘Part of the fabric of one’s life here’ – Daisy and Labo.

  By the hearth, with Daisy’s successor, Bendo.

  Mowing the terraces and, in a virtually unprecedented burst of culinary initiative, making piccalilli.

  Patrolling his acres.

  With Princess Anne during BAFTA’s tribute at the Odeon Leicester Square on 9 October 1988 – for most of those present, a night to forget.

  ‘I like ’em in my hand’ – alone on stage, and connecting, during happier times in the early 1990s.

  A comeback and a swansong: with Bertrand ‘The Genius’ Tavernier and Jane Birkin in 1989, on the set of Daddy Nostalgie (These Foolish Things).

  Hélène Bordes, whose analysis of Dirk’s memoirs convinced him he was being taken seriously as a writer.

  With Sir Peter Ustinov and the ‘eager, quick, relaxed’ Jacques Chirac, at the French Institute, Kensington, 15 May 1996.

  Dominique Lambilliotte, whose persistence bore fruit.

  Christine and Alain de Pauw, who bought Clermont from Dirk and kept him au courant with developments.

  A Jane Bown study of John Osborne, otherwise ‘Cpl 22524901’ or simply ‘225’.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Glum’ – with Eileen Atkins in The Vision.

  ‘He IS a comfort’ – Bacchus, a gift many years earlier from Xan and Daphne Fielding, installed safely on the balcony at Cadogan Gardens.


  Preparing to talk about the Holocaust to the pupils of King’s School, Rochester, in May 1992.

  ‘I cheer up a very little when I think of that’ – the Carte de séjour which Dirk kept in his wallet until his death, seven years after its expiry.

  The last big interview, filmed in the summer of 1991 and transmitted as Dirk Bogarde – By Myself the following January, shortly after the announcement of his knighthood. Photographed by its director, Paul Joyce.

  The artist as subject (1): stages in David Tindle’s realisation of the National Portrait Gallery’s commission, for which he spent four days at Clermont in April 1986. His pencil drawing was shown and sold at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1988; the painted ‘pre-study’, at a London art fair in 2007. The finished canvas was among a small selection lent by the NPG to 10 Downing Street early in Tony Blair’s tenure as Prime Minister.

  The artist as subject (2): Dirk, as Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities, as depicted by his father Ulric Van den Bogaerde (see letter to Audrey Carr, 28 July 1985). The better likeness has not been seen in public since it was first exhibited in 1958.

  Tableau for Sybil Burton (see letter to Eileen Atkins, 3 May 1991). The figure seated in the middle of the front row was not, despite speculation in recent years, Picasso, but a passer-by unknown to any of the principals. Donald Pickering, Alma Cogan (the stunt’s organiser), Stanley Baker, Graham Usher, Murray Drucker, (partially hidden) Burt Shevelove, Gerd Larsen, Donald MacLeary, Tony; (seated) ‘Boaty’ Boatwright, Dirk, The Man Off The Street, Sara Harrison, Noel Harrison. The identity of the book and the relevance of the doll have defied the memory of the surviving participants.

  ‘We had a terrific fifty years together and nothing can take any part of that away.’

  John Coldstream, Literary Editor of the Daily Telegraph from 1991 to 1999, is the author of Dirk Bogarde: The Authorised Biography. He also edited For the Time Being, a collection of Bogarde’s journalism, and Ever, Dirk, a collection of Bogarde’s letters. With his wife, Sue, he ‘divides his time’ between West Sussex and London.

  Dirk Bogarde was known as the star of more than sixty films and a critically acclaimed author. To a privileged few, however, he was also a prolific, stimulating and treasured correspondent. Ever, Dirk is a superb collection of his letters covering three decades. These letters represent an alternative autobiography, and reveal Bogarde’s sharp intelligence, easily provoked waspishness, an aversion to the politically correct, a directness which could wound and offend, and yet a robust compassion for those in need.

  Copyright

  A WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON EBOOK

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

  First published in ebook in 2011 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

  Copyright © 2008 The Estate of Dirk Bogarde and John Coldstream

  The moral right of John Coldstream to be identified as the editor of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978 0 2978 5620 7

  Orion Books

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper St Martin’s Lane

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  1. Dirk’s mastiff, part of the family since 1961.

  1. Ricki Huston, fourth wife of John Huston, had died in a car crash in France on 29 January.

  1. Pomodori.

  2. Rosamond Lehmann.

  1. Where he made The Fixer in late 1967, under the direction of John Frankenheimer.

  2. Prima Porta.

  1. Losey had long wished to direct an adaptation of L. P. Hartley’s 1953 novel.

  2. Julie Christie.

  3. Warren Beatty.

  4. Mia Farrow.

  5. Pinter, who had scripted The Servant and Accident.

  6. Dirk had had hepatitis in 1955.

  7. Galileo, starring Cyril Cusack, directed by Liliana Cavani. Losey had staged Brecht’s The Life of Galileo (Das Leben des Galilei ) in Hollywood and New York in 1947, and would finally realise a film version in 1974.

  1. Secret Ceremony, directed by Losey, with Elizabeth Taylor and Mia Farrow.

  1. Beatrice Dawson, costume designer.

  2. Jean Kennedy Smith, sister to John and Robert Kennedy; later US Ambassador to Ireland. Their brother Edward had been involved one month earlier in the so-called ‘Chappaquiddick Island Incident’, near Edgartown, when Mary Jo Kopechne drowned.

  3. Gareth Forwood; Simone Signoret and her husband Yves Montand; Jean-Louis Trintignant.

  1. Helmut Berger.

  2. Alain Delon, star of Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers (Rocco e i suoi fratelli ) and The Leopard (Il gattopardo).

  3. Bryan Forbes’s The Madwoman of Chaillot, from the 1945 play by Jean Giraudoux.

  4. Directed by Richard Attenborough.

  5. For R. J. Minney’s ‘Puffin’ Asquith (Leslie Frewin, 1973).

  6. The Investiture of the Prince of Wales was to take place at Caernarvon on 1 July.

  1. Fox – Dirk’s agent.

  1. He would pay 740,000 francs, roughly £56,000.

  2. Damiano Damiani, who was planning a project titled The Time of Your Life.

  3. Gian Maria Volontè, who had co-starred with Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars (Per un pugno di dollari ).

  4. Betty Box and Ralph Thomas, the producer and director with whom Dirk made nine films for Rank.

  1. John Schlesinger. It was on his film Darling that Dirk first met AS, in charge of continuity.

  2. It did. Dirk would work with Anthony Harvey in 1981.

  3. His success at the 1967 Film Festival with Dutchman was followed in 1969 by an Oscar nomination for The Lion in Winter.

  4. A sequence in Darling at Lord’s cricket ground called for artificial rain, which resulted in AS’s continuity sheets being sodden. Arnold Schulkes, Dirk’s stand-in since 1957, joined the rescue mission by pegging the bedraggled papers to the hallowed, sun-drenched turf.

  5. Upon This Rock, transmitted in 1973.

  6. Dirk’s personal chronology was, as usual, awry.

  7. Losey had been Visiting Professor of Film and Drama at his alma mater, Dartmouth College.

  1. Tadzio, the boy in Thomas Mann’s story.

  2. Richard Roud, critic.

  1. The studio built by Dino De Laurentiis.

  2. The independent cinema in Hampstead.

  3. William Friedkin’s belatedly released film of Pinter’s play, with Robert Shaw, Patrick Magee, Sydney Tafler and Dandy Nichols.

  1. The world première of Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth, at the St Martin’s Theatre, starred Anthony Quayle and Keith Baxter.

  2. JL took exception to the interview with Margaret Hinxman (The Sunday Telegraph, 22 February), in which Dirk recalled an incident during the making of Accident. ‘We’d been waiting all night for a sunrise and I moved a prop, a child’s tricycle … Joe yelled at me “Can’t you ever learn to be disciplined?” It was the one thing he knew would hurt me because I’ve prided myself on being professional above everything. Of course, he didn’t mean it.’